Books on the Nightstand discussion

Hi all,

In short: Please list your 2 or 3 all-time favorite titles here!

In the "2016 Reading Plans" thread some people mentioned they'd like to have our group favorite reads to be among their reading goals. But our favorites aren't listed anywhere that we know of, so...

I'll create a shareable spreadsheet for us to use for this. (No posters' names on the spreadsheet, just all the titles.) If you have 20 favorites and you can't whittle it down, please look over others' favorites and give us the ones you don't see named already.

I'll compile and share the list before the first of the year. Thanks in advance for participating.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee
Lonesome Dove by McMurtry
Rebecca by DuMaurier

The Count of Monte Cristo

Await Your Reply

Ghirlandaio's Daughter

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Cloud Atlas

Girl at War

Also - Fates and Furies

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Native Son by Richard Wright

The Secret History

Gone with the Wind

Outlander

Love this idea :) Mine are Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

Thanks for organizing this Mindy.
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese.
The Ruins - Scott Smith

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Most Beautiful Book in the World by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Thank you for organizing, Mindy!

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery
Shelter Me - Juliette Fay

Fiction:
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Nonfiction:
Eleni by Nicholas Gage
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese

A tough call but ... The Writer's Desk, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Ragtime.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

I love it that other people are listing more of my all time favorites! We can't all be wrong :-)

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Pride and Prejudice

Marilynn Robinson, Housekeeping
V. Nabokov, Pnin
J.M. Coetzee, The Life of Michael K
Kobo Abe, The Ark Sakura

Impossible to choose!! but at 1 AM this morning -

Children's: The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
Fiction: The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
Non-Fiction: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer AND A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

And so many more ....

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

Well, my VERY favorites have already been mentioned, but some runners up are , , . Thanks for organizing this.

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
Middlemarch

Thanks Mindy! Another example of BOTNS making my dreams come true.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Angle of repose I have listened to.

I agree with Deb, but 3 of my
favourites are:
Night Train to Lisbon
The Eyre Affair
American Gods

Mindy wrote: "To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee
Lonesome Dove by McMurtry
Rebecca by DuMaurier"

Rebecca is my #1 all time favorite.
Others:
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
The Witching Hour, Anne Rice
Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay
Talk Before Sleep, Elizabeth Berg
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

tooooo many to list

Oh! and my childhood favorite: Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh

Louise wrote: "I agree with Deb, but 3 of my
favourites are:
Night Train to Lisbon
The Eyre Affair
American Gods"

Loved The Eyre Affair--love that whole series, so so clever.

A few have already been mentioned so I'll add these:

Silk by Alessandro Baricco
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist
Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye

and from childhood:
The Fabulous Flight by Robert Lawson

Fall of Giants, Ken Follett
A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
The Brethren, John Grisham

I also loved A Prayer for Owen Meanyas an all time favorite and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. All the Robertson Davies books stick with me and I can't pick just one.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Here be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Island by Alistair MacLeod, short stories

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund, novel

The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey, memoir/science

House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Giver - Lois Lowry

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
The Thirteenth Tale

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon (Stephen King meets "To Kill a Mockingbird.")

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

Time and Again by Jack Finney
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

The Stand by Stephen King
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Prayer for Owen Meanyby John Irving

The first of my favorites that came to mind have already been mentioned (you smart people, you) so I'll go with some others:

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
Sister Mother Husband Dog by Delia Ephron

East of Eden (Steinbeck)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), and Great Expectations (Dickens) - but they are already mentioned

Spiritual: New Seeds of Contemplation (Merton)

Childhood: The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and McElligott's Pool (Seuss)

Thanks for doing this! It is giving me great ideas for future reading!

Some great choices, so many I love too. I would like to add:

Blindness - Jose Saramayo
A Month in the Country - J.LCarr
Lord of the Rings -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Bone People - Keri Hulme

Childhood:
Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

Some great choices, so many I love too. I would like to add:

Blindness - Jose Saramayo
A Month in the Country - J.LCarr
Lord of the Rings -J.R.R. Tolkien
The Bone People - Keri Hulme

Childhood:
Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
Legacy by Susan Kay


Childhood: the Ghost Next Door by Wylly Folk St John
Heidi by Joanna Spyri

What a great opportunity. I agree with many & now have more areas of interest. In this moment, my favorites are:

The Sparrow
Jane Eyre
In Cold Blood

Three of my favorites that haven't been listed yet:

A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

I'm enjoying this list immensely! Here are a few of my favorites:

Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
Lamb by Christopher Moore (already listed by Julie)

Many of my favorites have been mentioned. Here are a few more:

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Ford
The Kitchen House - Grissom
South of Broad - Conroy

Christian: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Nonfiction: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Some honorable mentions:
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

outlandish series

Hard to narrow down to two or three but the ones that jump to the top of my mind are:
These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories
The Power of One
Peace Like a River

So many more! This was hard!

My favorite books change as I go through the seasons of my life. At 9 I loved The Nancy Drew Mystery Series, at 12, romance filled my life, Kathleen Norris' Three Men and Diana, thirties, Stephen King.
Listing just 3 is hard but here goes, all non-fiction:

Shadow Divers
Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
The Bear's Embrace: A Story of Survival

And Ladies of the Club
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Cutting for Stone